Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. Wouldn't you say, she asked, that killings like this are influenced by violent movies? No, I said, I wouldn't say that. But what about 'Basketball Diaries'? She asked. Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun? The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office, and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. Events like this, I said, if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; These two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory.
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The dissolution of commercial animal farming as we know it obviously requires more than our individual commitment to vegetarianism. To refuse on principle to buy products of the meat industry is to do what is right, but it is not to do enough. To recognize the rights of animals is to recognize the related duty to defend them against those who violate their rights, and to discharge this duty requires more than our individual abstention. It requires acting to bring about those changes that are necessary if the rights of these animals are not to be violated. Fundamentally, then, it requires a revolution in our culture's thought about, and its accepted treatment of, farm animals... But prejudices die hard, all the more so when they are insulated by widespread secular customs and religious beliefs, sustained by large and powerful economic interests, and protected by the common law. To overcome the collective entropy of those forces against change will not be easy. The animal rights movement is not for the faint heart.
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When she was a small girl, Amanda hid a ticking clock in an old, rotten tree trunk. It drove woodpeckers crazy. Ignoring tasty bugs all around them, they just about beat their brains out trying to get at the clock. Years later, Amanda used the woodpecker experiment as a model for understanding capitalism, Communism, Christianity, and all other systems that traffic in future rewards rather than in present realities.
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The position we hold-the abolitionist position-is often said to be 'extreme,' and those of us who hold it are said to be 'extremists.' The unspoken suggestions are that extreme positions cannot be right and that extremists must be wrong.
But I am an extremist when it comes to rape-I am against it all the time. I am an extremist when it comes to child abuse- I am against it all the time. I am an extremist when it comes to sexual discrimination, racial discrimination-I am against it all the time. I am an extremist when it comes to abuse of the elderly- I am against it all the time. The plain fact is, moral truth often is extreme, and must be, for when the injustice is absolute, then one must oppose it-absolutely.
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-and that 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack on the United States were complete. The color-coded warning system is not raised. The Homeland Security secretary, Tom Ridge, does not attend the announcement. Number eight. July 6, 2004. Democratic p
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As the representatives of the people we are here to declare that our resolve has not been weakened by these horrific and cowardly acts. referring to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
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Humor results when society says you can't scratch certain things in public, but they itch in public.
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People named John and Mary never divorce. For better or for worse, in madness and in saneness, they seem bound together for eternity by their rudimentary nomenclature. They may loathe and despise one another, quarrel, weep, and commit mayhem, but they are not free to divorce. Tom, Dick, and Harry can go to Reno on a whim, but nothing short of death can separate John and Mary.
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Until we can own our centuries old distortion of God's word, we will probably never really move off the dime in current distortions of God's word. There is no special merit in declaring that what we hold now is part of the 'faith once delivered to the saints' or 'the church's teaching from the beginning.' We have been consistently right in some things -- consistently wrong in others. I believe... that our 'teaching' has often been racist and misogynist -- not always through our documents, but with winks, jokes, the language of our prayers, exclusionary policies and actions and the toleration of domestic violence and violence against minorities. This is not rocket science. When we do not intervene in long patterns of abuse, we tolerate and support that abuse -- and our silence speaks our doctrine, doesn't it?
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The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability.
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...to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on Heaven is to create hell. In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh start in a tidy habitat, germ-free and secured by angels, religious multitudes are gambling the only life they may ever have on a dark horse in a race that has no finish line.'
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Instead of the 1997 film directed, written, by James Cameron with Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane creating a love story and a large diamond with a beautiful song ââ?¬Å?My Heart Will Go Onââ?¬Â sung by Celine Dion. What about the real love story that took place that night between the passengers themselves, and many crew members knowing they would also give their lives. Adding another meaning for ââ?¬Å?SOSââ?¬Â Service, Obedience, and Sacrifice. ~Tom Baker
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I think the key for us is maturity. It was a big jump for our freshman going from Pony League to high school baseball. You have a shorter distance between the bases and from the mound to home in Pony. But our young guys did carry a the load for us, or they wouldn't have been there.
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I think the international outpouring of gratitude for the work Tom was doing is a wonderful thing.
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Crazy? Once I was crazy. They locked me in a room to die. Die? I don't want to die. All the mice will get me. Mice? I hate mice. They drive me crazy. Crazy? Once I was crazy. They locked....
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While you are away, movie stars are taking your women. Robert Redford is dating your girlfriend, Tom Selleck is kissing your lady, Bart Simpson is making love to your wife.
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I'm equally dismayed that House managers have already chosen to contact witnesses. And then, to announce a witness reluctance to participate until they know the circumstances, that is in clear violation of the agreement that we had last week. And I hope it's not a harbinger of the politicized process that we have all said we oppose,
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En vestenkalpig unsdernöking gjord vid ett untivseriet i Enlgand har visat att utfiall de två fösrta och de två sista botskevärna i alla orden i en text är ritkigt plessarade, spelar det liten roll i viklen orgnindslöfjd de övirga boskvätrena i orden kommer. Tetxen är fullt läbsar t.o.m. om de andra bokestävrna kommer hullorebmuller! Detta eftorsem vi inte läser varje enkisld botksav, utan ser bidlen av ordet som helhet.
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To support federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is to come down on the side of hope for the millions of Americans suffering from diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to cancer to Parkinson's to diabetes,
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What is the difference between a Peeping Tom and someone who's just got out of the bath? One is rude and nosy, and the other's nude and rosy.
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Rap music... sounds like somebody feeding a rhyming dictionary to a popcorn popper.
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Internalization. This occurs when you've exploited impact, when you've molded the standard material to your needs and made it yours, when you've made your new skills strong through hard use. All of a sudden these new concepts stopped churning within you, and a new reality is born: You and the concepts are one. They have literally become you. You have become them.
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A lot of times I find that people who are blessed with the most talent don't ever develop that attitude, and the ones who aren't blessed in that way are the most competitive and have the biggest heart.
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I couldn't believe that we would actually commit $8 million to create a Web site that would encourage investors to bet on futures involving terrorist attacks and public assassinations, ... ... I can't believe that anybody would seriously propose that we trade in death ... How long would it be before you saw traders investing in a way that would bring about the desired result?
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Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight. Equilibrium is pragmatic. You have to get everything into proportion. You compensate, rebalance yourself so that you maintain your angle to the world. When the world shifts, you shift.
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merely replacing Secretary O'Neill and Lindsey is not a solution. With our economy stalling, unemployment rising and confidence suffering, it is clear that we need more than new faces. We need a new plan to stimulate our economy now.
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Hockey is the original extreme sport.
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I don't believe in team motivation. I believe in getting a team prepared so it knows it will have the necessary confidence when it steps on a field and be prepared to play a good game.
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You were in a band called Electric Sheep. Electric Sheep? Dude, what exactly were you thinking at that time? 'In a world of bands called Limp Bizkit and Hoobastank, Electric Sheep rolls off the tongue like a Shakespearean love sonnet. Leave me alone.'
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Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.
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